Shadow of Plea Deal for David Petraeus Loomed Over Hillary Clinton Email Case

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David H. Petraeus, left, during a discussion with Peter Bergen of the New America think tank in New York last month. Mr. Petraeus, the retired four-star general and C.I.A. director, pleaded to a misdemeanor charge for mishandling highly classified information, avoiding jail time.CreditBryan R. Smith/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

WASHINGTON — As F.B.I. lawyers weighed whether to recommend criminal charges over Hillary Clinton’s private email server, one recent controversy loomed large over their decision: the plea deal reached last year by David H. Petraeus, the retired four-star general and C.I.A. director, for giving highly classified information to a woman with whom he had an affair.

James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director, said Tuesday that in assessing the Clinton case and looking at past cases on the handling of classified information, “we cannot find a case that would support bringing criminal charges on these facts.”

He did not mention Mr. Petraeus by name, but Mr. Comey and other F.B.I. officials were known to be deeply upset by the Justice Department’s willingness to let Mr. Petraeus plead to a misdemeanor charge in the case. That decision complicated the Clinton investigation enormously for the F.B.I. because the case against Mrs. Clinton appeared much weaker to them than the case against Mr. Petraeus.

In the Petraeus case, the retired general acknowledged in a taped interview that he knew that some of the “black book” journals he gave to his mistress, Paula Broadwell, for a book she was writing were “highly classified,” according to court documents. He then lied to F.B.I. investigators, denying that he gave her any classified information.

In contrast, Mr. Comey said in the Clinton case that “we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information.”

Mr. Comey and the F.B.I. had pushed for felony charges against Mr. Petraeus for mishandling classified information and then lying about it. But Eric H. Holder Jr., then the attorney general, overruled Mr. Comey and reduced the charge to a misdemeanor, sparing Mr. Petraeus any jail time.

While one case does not serve as binding precedent for the next, prosecutors and F.B.I. agents said that Mr. Petraeus’s sentence made it harder to argue that Ms. Clinton should face charges, barring some new revelation.